Spending shift to welfare is welcome

Tuesday

Jan 22, 2013 at 6:00 AM

I am writing in an attempt to ensure that the significance of David Brooks’ article “In defense of Pentagon cuts” (Telegram & Gazette, Jan 11) is not lost.

Mr. Brooks writes that “Europeans … have chosen welfare over global power.” He points out that Europeans are now spending close to 1.5 percent of GDP, down from 2.5 percent in the 1990s, and that similar cuts in American defense could make “us look a lot like Europe of today.”

While Mr. Brooks doesn’t appear to condone these changes, I would like to suggest that they herald an altogether new sanity among humanity that should be celebrated: tax revenues going to welfare rather than war, doctors rather than drones, medicine rather than missiles.